Best 209 quotes in «opera quotes» category

Premiering a new opera is probably one of the hardest things in the world to do, and opening nights of any opera are always pretty stressful.

Professionally, I did a couple of operas when I was in school, when I was 18.

Quite a few operas are still being commissioned around the world, although nothing apart from audience popularity can ensure more than a few performances.

Soap operas got nothing on my family history.

Soap opera seems to be a dirty word, but actually they are the most popular shows we have.

Soap opera wouldn't be my first choice, but at this point in my life, I would consider a soap. It would allow me to act and still do other things with my life.

Staid middle age loves the hurricane passions of opera.

So long as it doesn't get to the point where you don't remember whose opera you're listening to, I'm willing to experiment.

Some may say that I couldn't sing, but no one can say that I didn't sing.

some soap opera, you know, real people pretending to be fake people with made-up problems being watched by real people to forget their real problems.

Soloist are inspiring in Opera and perhaps even in small entreprenurial ventures, but there is no place for them in large corporations.

That's nothing - my alarm clock is set for eight.

Strictly cop and go's until we laid in the Galapagos Eating tacos, higher than an opera note

The aria, after all, is the soul of opera.

The arts were a big part of my childhood. We went to the theatre and opera a lot as a family. We were not at all wealthy, but it was at a time when the arts were publicly funded and there were free tickets available. For someone like myself who wasn't that academically inclined, it was a great escape.

The catalogue of miseries seems to cry out for commercial spots and a station break: the stuff of noonday soap opera.

The audience is requested not to refrain from talking during the overture. Otherwise they will know all the tunes before the opera begins.

The great opera composers were so good at their job, that the whole genre came to be built around the concept of the composer's vision.

The most widely criticised singers in the history of opera, Maria Callas and Franco Corelli, happen also to be the best singers. I am honoured for being part of their group.

The Hitch Hiker's Guide has not been an opera. It has however been a tapestry, if you count a woven bath towel as a tapestry.

The Holocaust is not a cheap soap opera. The Holocaust is not a romantic novel. It is something else.

The inventor of the modern foundation garment that we women wear today was a German scientist and opera lover by the name of Otto Titsling.

The music of the most popular operas is so highly esteemed, it can stand endless revivals.

The success of our operas rests most of the time in the hands of the conductor. This person is as necessary as a tenor or a prima donna.

There was something in the bel canto, not just opera, but a certain style of Italian singing that I responded to deeply.

The sympathies of a well-adjusted person can easily be aroused by the plight of strangers. Indeed, the skillful writer of a novel, a play, or an opera can engage our emotions on behalf of people who are not only strangers to us, but who do not even exist! And a person whose emotions cannot be so aroused is not behaving normally.

The Opera reminds me of my tax audit. It was in a language I didn’t understand. And it ended in tragedy.

There's no rational reason why opera should exist. It's expensive, time consuming. Yet in some shape or other it has always existed.

Tom [Courtenay] and Albert Finney met Ron Harwood on the dresser, so that's how it started. It's a wonderful documentary. It's called Tosca's Kiss and Mr Hardwood told me about it when I asked him what the genesis was. It was made in 1983 and Verdi, who was rich and successful, toward the end of his life decided to build a mansion for himself in Milan, where he lived, and he stipulated that when he died opera singers and musicians - because he knew so many who were no longer playing at the Scala and some were poor - could live there.

They crested a rise, and there it was, in the hollow between rolling hills—a low, square building, ghostly gray in the moonlight. "Is that it?" asked Hamilton. "It probably isn't the local opera house," groaned Ian.

They tell me Wagner's music is better than it sounds.

They're getting me involved in intrigue again, and I think it follows a classic formula in a soap opera.

Tonight I gave you my soul, and I am dead." - Christine, from Gaston Leroux's: The Phantom of the Opera.

True expression is hard when performing opera. The problem is that opera relies on the dramatic context of the piece. It can be interpreted and represented, but there are guidelines; there is a vocabulary within the pieces that you must know objectively and reflect.

What's all this about yanking poor Magnus and Alec back from their vacation?" Isabelle demanded. "They have opera tickets!

Truths that startled the generation in which they were first announced become in the next age the commonplaces of conversation; as the famous airs of operas which thrilled the first audiences come to be played on hand-organs in the streets.

Wagner used to read the libretti of his operas to his friends; I am glad I was not there.

What is the source of power of musicians who are financially browbeaten, most of whom work for minimum wage or less? Musicians who cannot even afford to buy tickets to operas or concerts in which they themselves perform?

Very few opera singers in history have been able to cross into popular music.

What's difficult to understand about German opera? It's always the same. Boy meets girl, boy falls in love, girl gets devoured by horrible winged creature with claws.

When I was a teenager, I thought I wanted to be an actor. I worked on an Indian soap opera that was my first exposure to production. But I quickly became disillusioned by acting and seeing that in the movies I loved and the TV I loved, no one looked like me. There weren't going to be any leading roles that would be interested in casting someone with my face.

When I've seen my operas in Europe, they have always struck me as more American than when I hear them here. I can't tell you what that phenomenon is.

When you are up close to an opera singer, hearing this incredible volume of noise coming from a human being - its beyond belief.

When you are confronted with an opera, you have to keep an eye on everything: the musicians, the chorus, the ballet, the singers, the staging.

When my enemies stop hissing, I shall know I'm slipping.

When you decide to become an opera singer, it's a commitment that allows nothing else to interfere. Even your family - and I have a young daughter - has to take second place.

Why are homosexuals addicted to soap opera? Because our lives are a vivid situation.

When you work on a soap opera, that's three years of you working every day. There was no time to do anything other than the soap opera - you're locked in.

Why does one never hear of government funding for the preservation and encouragement of comic strips, girlie magazines and TV soap operas? Because these genres still hold the audience they were created to amuse and instruct.

Writing an opera and premiering in England, you could say I was going right into the eye of the storm and I came out successfully. A little tattered and bruised, but so what, I made it.